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Union Township Rep. John Becker doesn't exactly have a history of standing up for causes CityBeat agrees with, and this week we're seeing more of the same.

He's the voice behind another Republican-backed bill introduced Nov. 14, that, if passed, would introduce regulations that would ban most public and private health insurance policies, including Medicaid, from covering abortion care and several common methods of contraception.According to a press release from NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, H.B. 351 would manipulate language on the Ohio Revised Code to redefine abortion services and restrict public hospitals from performing abortions — even on women whose lives are at risk due to the pregnancy or who have been victims of rape.

NARAL Executive Director Kellie Copeland commented, "Imagine
facing a life-threatening pregnancy complication and being told that
your insurance won’t cover the procedure because Ohio politicians banned
that coverage.
Imagine becoming pregnant as the result of a rape, and having to cover
the cost of an abortion out of pocket because this bill became law. It’s
unthinkable."

Also introduced on Wednesday to U.S. Congress was the Women's Health Protection Act, what supporters are calling a historic pro-choice bill that would outlaw states' authority to limit women's reproductive rights by prohibiting states from passing Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which impose extra regulations on doctors who operate in medical practices that perform abortions. The bill, which will likely face harsh odds in the U.S.'s conservative-dominated House, wouldn't completely diminish states' existing anti-abortion laws, although it require judges to be more carefully reconsider cases that challenge the legality of already-existing laws. Becker's bill has yet to be assigned to a committee. Here's the bill in full.

As one of the self-proclaimed "most conservative" members of his party, he's also a cosponsor of the state's Heartbeat Bill and once called the proposal of a needle-exchange program, which could reduce the spread of infectious bloodborne diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, the product of a "liberal media agenda."

In August, Becker introduced a bill that would kick a large chunk of pregnant women and low-income parents off of Medicaid by grossly lowering the entry eligibility.

Becker also recently lobbied for the impeachment of the judge who
allowed the state to legally recognize the marriage of Jim Obergefell
and his 20-year partner, John Arthur, who recently passed away from Lou Gehrig's disease, for his decision. ]]>The right to obtain emergency contraception is one that was only recently granted to all women of child-bearing age, marking a huge national victory for women's health rights over conservative political agendas.

But now that's it's available over-the-counter, is it really easy to access?

According to the Reproductive Justice Reporting Project, it depends on where and who you are.

The project, a newly-formed coalition comprising a number of alternative news publications under the umbrella of the Association of Alternative News Media (AAN) and the Media Consortium, part of a larger initiative to "study how independent news organizations can work together to create a collective impact," according to AAN.

The newest component of the project — "Where Is Your Plan B?" — is a website that uses crowd-sourced data to monitor the availability of emergency contraceptives across the country.

News outlets collaborating on the project include Austin Chronicle, Bitch Magazine, In These Times, LEO Weekly, Making Contact/National Radio Project, Ms. Magazine, People*Power*Media, Portland Mercury, Public News Service and Santa Fe Reporter.

Once the site gets a little more press, it will start publishing detailed maps documenting which pharmacies are readily providing Plan B, where it might be illegally restricted and where it's available but possibly made more difficult to obtain by roadblocks. For now, you can also find a thorough collection of investigative works from the Reproductive Justice Reporting Project from its participating news outlets, chronicling everything from how Native American women are being actively denied fair access to Plan B and women's access to abortion in New Mexico.

Plan B One-Step was first approved in July 2009 for use without a prescription for women only ages 17 or older; women younger than 17 were previously required to obtain a prescription.

In April, Judge Edward Korman ruled that the age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception were "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable." His ruling prompted the FDA to announce Plan B One-Step's availability to women 15 and older without a prescription, which was in June amended to include women of child-bearing age.

Many women's health advocates have expressed concerns about how pharmacies arerestricting accessibility to the drug, such as asking for identification even though the FDA doesn't require it or keeping the drug locked up or behind a counter, which could be a daunting barrier for some young girls, making an already unpleasant experience worse.

Commonly known as the "morning-after pill," Plan B is intended to be used when other methods of contraception fail. In extreme cases, it can be a rape victim's only option to prevent becoming pregnant.

The drug, which contains powerful levels of hormones found in some types of birth control pills, is more effective the more quickly it's taken after having unprotected sex, particularly within three days. That means having to obtain a prescription could null the effects of the pill or render it ineffective for a young woman struggling to get a doctor's appointment.

A research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 2012 found that of several pharmacies called in five different cities, 20 percent did not have emergency contraception in stock on the same day the patient called.

To honor National HIV Testing Day — a day meant to raise awareness about the virus — Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio region is offering free HIV testing at three locations in the Cincinnati area.

Free HIV testing is available today at from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Cincinnati's VA Medical Center (3200 Vine St.) and from 1-5 p.m. at the Lower Price Hill Health Center (2136 E. Eighth St.). The test is done quickly using a method called rapid HIV testing, which produces results immediately.

About 1.1 million people in the United States are living with HIV at any given time, and about one in five of those don't even realize they're infected.

That means those one in five could, at any time, be unknowingly transmitting the disease to their partners, or that they're missing out on taking important preventative measures that could keep the infection from developing into AIDS. The HIV virus is most commonly spread through unprotected sexual contact or sharing needles, or can be passed down from mother to child during pregnancy or shortly after birth. For more basic information about HIV, click here.

In 2012, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio provided 1,225 HIV tests amongst its eight facilities, among a number of other preventive services. Currently, Planned Parenthood branches across Ohio are being threatened by Ohio conservatives' efforts to defund the organization, which provides myriad health services in addition to abortion, including cancer and STD screenings, birth control, pregnancy testing and health care for both men and women. State and federal funds used by Planned Parenthood aren't used to fund abortions, which are instead funded by private donations.

If successful, the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature could pass a budget this weekend that would put Planned Parenthood at the back of the line for state funds. A separate set of federal funds would also go to crisis pregnancy centers, which have a history of using scare tactics and false information about abortion.

Under Obama's Affordable Care Act, which will go into effect in 2014, insurance providers will be required to cover HIV testing and birth control.

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With a set of initiatives unanimously approved last week, City Council is looking to join the state in combating Cincinnati’s human trafficking problem.
The initiatives would evaluate local courts’ practices in human
trafficking and prostitution cases and study the need for more
surveillance cameras and streetlights at West McMicken Avenue, a
notorious prostitution hotspot. Councilwoman Yvette Simpson, who
spearheaded the initiatives, says the West McMicken Avenue study will
serve as a pilot program that could eventually branch out to other
prostitution hotspots in Cincinnati, including Lower Price Hill and Camp
Washington.

Medicare data released yesterday revealed charges and payments can vary by thousands of dollars
depending on the hospital, including in Cincinnati. Health care
advocates and experts attribute the price disparity to the lack of
transparency in the health care system, which allows hospitals to set
prices without worrying about typical market checks. CityBeat previously covered the lack of health care price transparency in Ohio here.

Duke Energy is the No. 1 utility company polluter
in the nation, according to new rankings from Pear Energy. The rankings
looked at carbon dioxide emissions, which directly contribute to global
warming. Pear Energy is a solar and wind energy company that competes
with utility companies like Duke Energy, but the methodology behind the
rankings was fairly transparent and based on U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency data.

City Council approved form-based code yesterday, which
Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls has been working on for years. In a statement,
Qualls’ office called form-based code an “innovative alternative to conventional
zoning” that will spur development. “Cincinnati now joins hundreds of
cities that are using form-based code to build and reinforce walkable
places that create value, preserve character and are the bedrock of
Cincinnati neighborhoods’ competitive advantage,” Qualls said in the statement.

State Sen. Peggy Lehner is looking to amend the Ohio budget bill to add a $100 million voucher program
that would cover preschool for three- and four-year-olds. The details
of the program are so far unclear, but Lehner said she might put most of
the funding on the second year of the biennium budget to give the state
time to prepare proper preschool programs. If the amendment proceeded,
it would join recent efforts in Cincinnati to open up early education
programs to low- and middle-income families. CityBeat covered the local efforts and many benefits of quality preschool here.

Gov. John Kasich says he would back a ballot initiative for a mostly federally funded Medicaid expansion,
which the Health Policy Institute of Ohio says would insure nearly half
a million Ohioans and save the state hundreds of thousands of dollars
in the next decade. CityBeat covered the Medicaid expansion in further detail here.

Policy Matters Ohioreleased a lengthy report
yesterday detailing how the state could move towards clean energy and
electric cars and calling for more state incentives for clean energy.
The report praises Cincinnati in particular for using municipal policies
to build local clean energy and keep energy jobs in the city.

Citing the possibility of “gateway sexual activity,” the
bill would make it so teachers can be fined up to $5,000 if they
explain the use of condoms and other forms of birth control to high school
students. It would also prohibit individuals and groups from
distributing birth control on school grounds.

The bill pushes abstinence-only education to curtail any promotion, implicit or
explicit, of gateway sexual activity. To define such activity, the bill
cites Ohio’s criminal code definition for “sexual contact,” which is defined as “any
touching of an erogenous zone of another, including without limitation
the thigh, genitals, buttock, pubic region, or, if the person is a
female, a breast.”

The bill would also redirect federal funding to defund Planned Parenthood and shift funds to crisis pregnancy centers, which CityBeat covered in further detail here.

“Today the Ohio House Finance Committee voted to send our
state back to the 1950s,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of
NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, in a statement. “The Ohio House is doing
everything they can to restrict access to reproductive health care and
medically accurate information that help Ohioans live healthy lives.
(Gov. John) Kasich can stop these dangerous attacks on women’s health
care. We need him to speak out against these budget provisions and to
line-item veto these dangerous measures when they reach his desk.”

Researchers have found abstinence-only programs to be generally ineffective. A 2007 study
published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found abstinence-only
programs have no impact on rates for teenage pregnancy or vaginal
intercourse, while comprehensive programs that include birth control
education reduce rates.

A 2011 study
from researchers at the University of Georgia that looked at data from
48 states concurred abstinence-only programs do not reduce the rate of
teenage pregnancy. The study indicated states with the lowest teenage
pregnancy rates tend to have the most comprehensive sex and HIV
education programs.

When looking at three ways to prevent unintended pregnancies for a 2012 study,
the Brookings Center on Children and Families found the most
cost-effective policy was to increase funding for family planning
services through the Medicaid program. In other words, if governments increased spending on birth control programs, they would
eventually save money.

Still, a 2010 study
from a University of Pennsylvania researcher found abstinence-only
education programs may delay sexual activity. The study, which tracked
black middle school students over two years, found students in an
abstinence-only program had lower rates of sexual activity than students
in the comprehensive program.

At hearings on April 12, anti-abortion groups praised abstinence-only education for promoting chastity.

]]>

•Enquirer
reporter Sharon Coolidge’s use of open records law documented
Cincinnati’s lax enforcement of lead paint removal orders. She told
CityBeat that her coverage included positive impacts in addition to
those above in my main column:

The
day after her story was published, Mayor Mark Mallory ordered health
officials to explain why they hadn't forced problem landlords to clean
up their properties.

Three
public hearings led to a comprehensive city plan to eliminate childhood
lead poisoning by 2010. The plan lowers the medical threshold at which
health officials can intervene, thus catching lead poisoning in its
earliest stages.

City
Council gave the health department more than $1 million to finance
reforms. Poor families are getting kits to detect whether their homes
are contaminated.

In
one of his first acts as new governor, Ted Strickland allowed cities to
sue lead-paint producers; Cincinnati is suing Sherwin-Williams.

State
lawmakers are considering a new law, named after a family featured in
the Enquirer story, to provide $20,000 grants for lead removal.

•A
more recent public benefit from open records laws involved the Enquirer
suit to obtain secret streetcar vendors’ bids. Attorney Jack Greiner,
who handles First Amendment issues for the paper, said that Cincinnati's
ordinance requires bids be available for public review. Faced with
resistance, the Enquirer went to court. Hamilton County appellate judges
agreed with the paper, rejecting company arguments that records were
exempt from public records law as "trade secrets."

•Unless
you’re living under a Rock of Cliches, you’ve read or heard that flu is
sweeping the nation. Every sneeze, every cough, every chill and shiver
warns us that the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse is tethering his
pale horse at our curb. The catch is that despite breathless news media
offerings, little unusual is happening except for an early, aggressive
onset of the perennial scourge. Thousands die every year from flu, most
of them elderly. It would be news if we didn’t. Annual death estimates —
hampered by incomplete reporting and similar health problems — range
from 3,000 to 49,000.

•An
Enquirer Sunday Forum carried Michael Kinsley’s column about Hillary
Clinton’s extensive foreign travel as secretary of state. Kinsley doubts
the value of much of her travel but in today’s world, “The less
important the trip, the more prestige you gain by taking it.” Having
time and money to waste proves you have time and money to waste . . .
even if you’re on the taxpayers’ clock and paycheck. Maybe that
explains an otherwise inexplicable Enquirer revelation that Steve Chabot
is a foreign policy expert, citing his extensive foreign travel at
taxpayer expense.

•Enquirer
reporter Dan Horn produced two nay-saying front page stories. Both were
welcome surprises from Cincinnati’s “get on the team” daily. One questioned the argument that right-to-work laws provide an economic
boost in states like Indiana, Michigan, or, potentially, Ohio. That
anti-union policy was a staple topic in my 1950s high school debating
days. Economic analysis, like divining why crime rates change, is more
complicated than whether union membership is optional or required in a
“union shop.” Too many union/right-to-work debates — fueled by
no-compromise advocates putting re-election before public benefit —
ignore complexity.

•A
second invocation of skepticism by the Enquirer’s Dan Horn raised
serious doubts about feel-good gun buy-back programs. I’ll go this far
on guns: each firearm bought back and destroyed (not bought back and
sold to dealers for resale) is a gun that won’t kill someone. Cincinnati
Police destroy buy-back weapons not needed for investigations.
Buy-back, however, won’t change life on Cincinnati streets where scores
of young men kill each other each year. Anyone who wants a firearm can
get one faster than you can say, “Your money or your life.” Similar
doubts about Cincinnati’s gun buy-back program made Page 1 of the New
York Times.

•Fox
19’s Dave Culbreth came up with a smart take on the controversial idea
of arming teachers and school administrators. He interviewed Target
World assistant manager Amy Hanlon who demonstrated how a woman could
carry a concealed handgun. As Culbreth noted, there was nothing special
about her clothing: slacks, blouse, overshirt. By the end of the
interview, she’d removed nine concealed semi-automatics or revolvers,
including one tucked under her bra in a holster that also was displayed
on a counter-top mannequin bust.

•WCPO-TV plans an online local news challenge to the Enquirer’s Cincinnati.com,
according to Business Courier’s Jon Newberry. It’s a pioneering effort
by Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps that could go national, Newberry
suggested. Whether additional reporters, producers, editors, etc., will
come from the Business Courier and other established news media was not
clear. Scripps — a Cincinnati-based national print and broadcast company— published the Cincinnati Post until it closed the barely-sustaining
joint operating agreement with the Enquirer ended in 2007.

•Blogger
Peter Heimlich tipped me to Channel 19 anchor Ben Swann’s web gig
called Full Disclosure. Swann says there are enough witnesses to
challenge official police narratives of single shooters at three recent
massacres: the Oak Creek, Wis., Sikh temple; Aurora, Colo., Batman movie
premiere, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Salon.com challenged Swann about his apparent validation of those counter-narratives and he replied in part, “The
bottom line for me is the issue of asking questions. As you will
notice, I don’t call these operations ‘false flag’ as many people do …
(his ellipses) But as a journalist, that is not my job. Rather, my job
is to be a critical thinker.” And he added, “most of our media fail to question stories . . . a journalist’s job is not to have the answers, it is to ask the questions and search for truth.”

•There’s
a pathetic undercurrent in the Enquirer’s Monday Page1 profile of
Henry Heimlich’s efforts to regain American Red Cross support for his
eponymous “maneuver.” The physician claims there is no research to
support the Red Cross’s decision to return to back slaps rather than
Heimlich abdominal thrusts as first response to choking. Other than
Heimlich’s self-serving claims, there is no research proving his
maneuver works as well or better than back slaps. Assertions are not
evidence. Moreover, the Red Cross adopted Heimlich’s maneuver years ago
without the research Heimlich is calling for now. Heimlich has
anecdotal evidence of lives saved but that’s not research. Wisely,
reporter Cliff Radel quoted skeptics and critics of the maneuver. That
kind of even-handedness usually escapes admiring Enquirer stories about
Heimlich. And if the paper ever corrected a Memorial Day feature on
water safety, I missed it. The Enquirer drew national ridicule with its
illustration on how to use Heimlich’s maneuver to revive a standing
near-drowning victim.

•It’s
spitting into the wind to ask sports reporters to question what jocks
tell them, especially when truth-telling endangers future access. In the
Good Old Days, who read about fornicating, drunken and racist
professional athletes? More recently, golf reporters and publications
didn’t write about married Tiger Woods’ screwing around. This time, it’s
Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s stories about the heart-ripping
death of girlfriend Lennay Kekua from leukemia. Editors loved it. Now,
it seems she was a fiction amplified by incurious and credulous
reporters. It took sports blog Deadspin.com
to reveal the fraud after its reporters could find no public records of
her birth, life, education or death. Almost as nauseating as the
saccharine original stories about her death are the faux introspection
by sycophant reporters caught by the fraud.

•We’ve
gone a week without a promo for Oprah’s interview with champion
liar-cheater Lance Armstrong. That’s closure. So what does Armstrong do
now? Pitch performance enhancing drugs and blood transfusions on ESPN
and late TV?

•Al
Gore sold his troubled Current cable network to Al Jazeera, the
satellite network based in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Good. Nothing bars
foreigners from owning a cable network here, unlike the law that forced
Australian Rupert Murdoch to obtain U.S. citizenship after he bought Fox.

Backed
by the ruling Qatari emir, Al Jazeera scandalized Americans for
broadcasting tirades by Osama bin Laden and other anti-western Arab
leaders. We should have welcomed what they said in Arabic for home
audiences. Too often, we rely on sanitized remarks for
non-Arabic-speaking audiences or Washington assurances it was trying to
verify that speakers were who they said they were. Al Jazeera also
infuriated Arab audiences by carrying interviews with American and
Israeli officials that others in the Middle East ignored or rejected.

Most
American cable companies won’t carry the newer Al Jazeera English but
its website is one of my daily stops, especially when, say, AQIM kidnaps
oil workers in Algeria or French Legionnaires assist Mali’s pathetic
army in trying to halt and turn back Islamist rebels.

Al
Jazeera coverage of “Arab Spring” was so aggressive that embattled
North African rulers correctly accused it of supporting anti-government
demonstrators. So is Al Jazeera open to interference by the Qatari
government? Yes. Are its biases plain to anyone who listens or reads?
Yes. We don’t ignore Fox News for its biases.

•American
news media employ local nationals in foreign bureaus for their contacts
and language skills. That reliance failed when no one reported the 2010
anti-semitic rant by Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who
now is Egypt’s president. In part, Morsi called Jews “apes and dogs” and
shared the fantasy that the Palestinian Authority was “created by the
Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will
of the Palestinian people and its interests.”

Still
nastier, he urged listeners “to nurse our children and our
grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews . . .
bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the
descendants of apes and pigs.”

A
stump speech in his Nile Delta hometown, it took more than two years to
reach English-language news media. The original Arabic video is on
YouTube now. I encountered a translation of Morsi this month on a Forbes
website that, in part, chided the New York Times for missing or killing
the story. Days later, it was on Page 1 of the Times. After that, the
Obama administration an official “tut-tut.”

•Maybe
they’ll blame one of those ominous Canadian Cold Air Masses
(meteorological, not theological) for the brain freeze that disabled
news judgment at the Toronto Star. Flippant columns about rape aren’t
funny. Jimromenesko.com
posted these first two paragraphs of Rosie DiManno’s column about
testimony during the sexual abuse trial of a local physician:

“She lost a womb but gained a penis.

“The former was being removed surgically — full hysterectomy — while the latter was forcibly shoved into her slack mouth..."

•Headlines
are an art that always risks a step too far in an attempt to cure the copy editor boredom and draw readers to a story. This one, from philly.com,
achieves both in what has become a national story about a popular and
well-connected parish pastor: “Catholic priest/meth dealer liked sex in
the rectory.” You know you’d read more.

•Finally,
this from Shannyn Moore, who blogs on HuffPost as “Just a Girl from
Homer, Alaska.” It appeared first in the Anchorage Daily News and makes
her points without venturing beyond the pale into bad taste: “I'm
not advocating for no guns. I like mine and am not about to give them
up. But in this country, my uterus is more regulated than my guns. Birth
control and reproductive health services are harder to get than
bullets. What is that about? Guns don't kill people — vaginas do?”

]]>

Anybody who’s familiar with the Internet knows that it’s a great place for looking at pictures of people without their clothes.

Apparently a lot of people want to do that to vice presidential candidates as well.

Ryan is known for a proposed budget that would offer
massive tax cuts to the rich while attempting to reduce the deficit by
gutting Medicare.

If one is to believe TMZ’s absclusive titled “Paul Ryan: He’s Hiding A Six Pack,” then one could see why.

An intrepid CityBeat intern spent most of Monday morning
searching for pictures of said abs, but was only able to turn up the
vice presidential candidate waving ironically from his yacht.

According to TMZ’s unnamed Hill source, Ryan hits the gym
every morning at 6 a.m., and his routine is “fierce.” The source, who
talks like a stereotype, says Ryan is kind of on the skinny side, but
“totally ripped and has a six pack.”

Ryan’s press camp responded to the news by challenging Joe Biden to a sit-up contest in lieu of a vice presidential debate.

Google’s top four related search terms for Paul Ryan:

Vice President

Shirtless

Wiki

Budget

]]>The Ohio Attorney General’s office today released a report on
human trafficking in Ohio which found that out of 328
self-identified human trafficking victims, more than one-third were
trafficked while they were minors.

The victims were taken from all around Ohio, including
Cincinnati. The report found that 63 percent of the victims had run
away from home at least once, 59 percent reported having friends
involved in selling, 47 percent were raped more than a year
before being trafficked and 44 percent reported to be victims of child abuse.

In Cincinnati, the most common risk factors reported were
dropping out of school and having an older boyfriend. Rape was third
with 40 percent of Cincinnati victims reporting being raped.

In all of Ohio, the most common buyers for victims were
law enforcement. Businessmen and drug dealers were second and third,
respectively. In Cincinnati, the most common buyers were drug dealers,
followed by factory workers, then truckers.

The report highlights the severity of human trafficking in
Ohio. A 2010 report by the same commission found that 1,000
American-born youth had been trafficked in Ohio over the course of the
year, and as many as 3,000 American-born youth in Ohio were at risk for
trafficking.

Since the 2010 report, Gov. John Kasich has signed H.B.
262 into law, which outlaws human trafficking and enforces tougher
rules.

However, the commission does not believe current law is
enough, and it’s pushing for more rules against human trafficking. The
new rules would identify trafficking as child abuse, place a focus on
arresting and convicting buyers and invest in responding to adult sex
trafficking. The commission also wants a better response to youth
runaways, and it wants to establish better protocols for dealing with
at-risk youth, especially in correspondence with school officials.

When contacted by CityBeat, the Ohio Attorney General’s office said
they have no suggestions to specifically deal with law enforcement officials, which topped the list of buyers, who are involved in human trafficking.

The report was issued by the Attorney General’s Human
Trafficking Commission. It was authored by commission member Celia
Williamson, who is also a professor at the University of Toledo. The full report can be found here.

]]>Since Ohio House Bill 126 was passed in June 2004, abortion-inducing medication mifepristone has been regulated in such a way that physicians can only administer the exact amount approved by the FDA in 2000. Tomorrow, the case will continue to move forward when proponents for overturning the law present oral arguments in Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region v. DeWineat 8 a.m. at U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 100 E. Fifth St., Downtown. It's been a regulation deeply contested by physicians and women's rights advocates, who argue that alternate dosages of the medication are often legitimate and necessitated based on current medical knowledge, such as when a patient might warrant a lower dosage proven to safe and effective with fewer or less severe side effects.

According to a legal docket from the ACLU of Ohio, which backs a repeal of the law, "HB 126 is a unique law that effectively freezes medicine in time based on evidence more than ten years old."

A lawsuit, originally called Planned Parenthood of Cincinnati v. Taft, has been floating around in courts since 2004, when Planned Parenthood affiliates filed an injunction in an attempt to prevent the law from going into effect. According to the case schedule from the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, each side, plaintiffs and appellants,
will receive 15 minutes to present.

]]>Planned Parenthood advocates and supporters packed a hearing room in Columbus this morning to demonstrate opposition against controversial House Bill 298, a measure that, if passed, would put family planning clinics such as Planned Parenthood at the back of the line for state funding, instead giving priority to health departments.

The House Health Committee heard testimony from bill supporters and opponents. "If PP is defunded, we will still offer a full range of options for
care, but the working poor will have no way to pay for them," testified Beth Lonn, Chief Operating Officer of Planned Parenthood of
Central Ohio, according to a tweet from Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio.

Opponents of HB 298 express concern that the reprioritizing of funds would deny high-need women, particularly those of low income, access to preventive, affordable health care services. "More
than 96% of what we do is to provide essential lifesaving cancer
screenings, breast exams, birth control, sex education and counseling to
nearly 100,000 Ohio women and families, regardless of one’s ability to
pay," reads a segment on the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio website.

Rep. Nicki Antonio (D-Lakewood) expressed her concern for bill supporters' motivation, noting, "The proposed defunding bill is is a move based on ideology, not on practical needs of Ohioans...There are many counties in Ohio without alternatives to PP. It's a 'Health Care Desert.'"

Supporters of the bill such as Ohio Right to Life tout the measure as a way to steer funds away from the "abortion industry." The bill is now awaiting a committee vote.

]]>

Walnut Hills High School has once again
been recognized among the country's top high schools, ranking No. 1
in Ohio and 90th in the nation, according to U.S. News & World
Report's annual Best High Schools rankings. The ranking considered
22,000 public high schools, distinguishing some with gold, silver or
bronze medals based on factors such as state proficiency standards
and students' college preparedness. Indian Hill High School ranked
third in Ohio and 140 in the country, with Wyoming High School fourth
in the state and 143 nationally.

In other education news, state
legislators have introduced bipartisan legislation to curb pension
debt, while will result in teachers working longer and paying more
into the retirement system. The bills were introduced by Senate
President Tom Niehaus (R-New Richmond) and Senate Minority Leader
Eric H. Kearney (D-North Avondale).

Anyone willing to admit to having
purchased male sexual enhancement product Enzyte is eligible to
receive a piece of $24 million that the U.S. Justice Department has
released to pay people who bought products sold through fraudulent
practices. The former Forest-park based company's founder Steve
Warshak was convicted in 2008 for conspiracy, fraud, money laundering
and producing stupid commercials involving a smiling white guy's
penis-like garden hose working better after using the company's
product.

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, a 35-year
incumbent, was handily defeated by Tea Party challenger Richard
Mourdock on Tuesday after Mourdock spent weeks arguing that Lugar had
drifted from conservative principals. Here's some reaction to the
news of the 80-year-old's primary loss.

As expected, North Carolina yesterday passed its ban on gay marriage, 61 percent to 39 percent. The Los Angeles Times reports that the measure is more restrictive than other states' marriage amendments: "The measure is more restrictive than all but three of the marriage amendments passed in other states, according to a study published by 11
family law professors at seven North Carolina universities. The measure
could even deprive unmarried women of protections against domestic
abuse, while restricting child custody and visitation rights for
unmarried gay or straight couples, they said."

The Atlantic recounts a series
of potentially misleading reports about the CIA thwarting of an
Al-Qaeda plot to destroy a U.S. bound plane. Initial reports
suggested that a CIA double agent infiltrated the terrorist
organization, but later accounts attribute the work to an
intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia.

Maurice Sendak, author of Where the
Wild Things Are, died Tuesday in Connecticut, four days after
suffering a stroke. The following is an excerpt from a Philadelphia
Inquirer obituary, which notes that an estimated 10,000 of Sendak's
works and papers are collected in Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum &
Library:

Jonathan Bartlett, a University
of the Arts graduate, now a freelance illustrator in Brooklyn, said,
"What matters to me most as an illustrator is that he was
incredibly honest in his books. He had no qualms about speaking the
truth to kids. That's why his work has had such visceral impact for
so many years."

Jerry Spinelli, a children's book
writer living in Wayne, said, "He focused on the fringes, the
backwaters, the side-pools, the under-noticed areas of common human
experience, and he could transform that into stories, told with
pictures even more than with words."

Jobs, jobs, jobs. That is what
Republican House Speaker John Boehner said would be priority No. 1
for Republicans after sweeping the House of Representatives and many
state legislatures in 2010. This, Republicans said, was why they were
elected: People wanted to see changes in the economy fast.

But, apparently, there was one other
priority.

Almost immediately after coming into
office in 2011, Virginia Republicans set the national stage for vital
women’s health issues. House Bill 1 — the first bill Virginia
Republicans chose to take on — was a personhood bill, a bill that
define life beginning at conception. Not only would the bill have
banned abortion, it would also have banned the birth control pill,
which sometimes prevents birth by stopping the implantation of a
fertilized egg.

An impartial observer might wonder why
a personhood bill would be a top Republican priority. After all, the
same election that put all these Republicans in power also had a
personhood bill overwhelmingly rejected in Mississippi — a state so
socially conservative that 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans want
to make interracial marriage illegal, according to a recent poll from
Public Policy Polling.

Nonetheless, this was the issue
Virginia Republicans decided to give serious attention. In an economy
with a 9 percent unemployment rate at the time, this was the most
important issue to Virginia Republicans.

Ohio wasn’t much luckier with its
crop of Republicans. Five months after inauguration, the Ohio House
passed its “heartbeat” bill, or H.B. 125. To this day, it’s the
most radical anti-abortion bill in the country. Not only would it ban
abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected, but the bill makes no
exceptions for rape, incest or life-threatening circumstances.

Ohio and Virginia were not alone.
Republicans were pushing anti-abortion, anti-contraception bills all
around the nation. Pennsylvania, Kansas, Mississippi and Texas all
made national headlines with their own bills. In more than 20 states,
bills have been introduced to restrict insurance coverage of
abortions, according to ABC News. At the federal level, Republicans
have made funding for Planned Parenthood a top issue time and time
again, and insurance companies covering contraception recently became
such a big issue that the White House had to step in.

So much for keeping the government out
of health care. The same political party that clamored for small
government now couldn’t wait to regulate women’s health care.
Apparently, the economy is too much for the government to handle, but
every woman’s uterus is fair game.

There has been some backlash. After
Virginia tried to pass a bill that would force doctors to give
patients seeking abortion a transvaginal ultrasound, women’s health
advocates in states across the nation organized protests, leading to
governors and state legislatures beginning to back down in their
rhetoric. Even Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican who
originally supported the transvaginal ultrasound bill, has been
downplaying his involvement in Virginia’s anti-abortion,
anti-contraception bills.

Now, Mitt Romney, the likely GOP
nominee for president, is facing some of the backlash. In a recent
Gallup poll, women came out severely against Romney. In the category
of women under 50, Obama held 60 percent of voters, while Romney held
only 30 percent. That’s right, Obama now leads with women under 50
by a two-to-one margin.

But while that may stop some rhetoric,
the bills and laws are still coming forward. The Ohio heartbeat bill
is still being pushed by some Republicans in the Ohio Senate, and a
personhood initiative could show up in Ohio’s 2012 ballot after a
stamp of approval from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.
Mississippi also plans to reintroduce its personhood initiative in
the 2012 ballot, and other states are beginning to pass around
petitions for their own initiatives as well.

In the end, one is left to wonder what
could stop social conservatives. Public backlash and poor polling
don’t seem to be enough to stop the Republican war on women, and in
some cases it might have actually emboldened them.

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If you’re a horny little bugger, you might want to get as much sex as you can during the next six weeks.

A left-leaning advocacy group, Liberal Ladies Who Lunch, is calling for a nationwide sex strike from April 28 to May 5. It says all “women and people who want to join in solidarity should withhold from having sex with their partners.”

The protest is in reaction to recent attempts by Republican lawmakers to overturn a new federal rule that requires all insurance companies to provide contraceptives to women free of charge beginning in August.

“This will help people understand that contraception is for women and men, because men enjoy the benefit of women making their own choices about when and if they want to get pregnant,” the group states on its website.

“Once Congress and insurance agencies agree to cover contraception, we will then resume having sex,” it adds. “Until then men will have to be content with their hand.”

Meanwhile, the wife of a Virginia lawmaker already has begun the strike. Rita Von Essen Albo, who is married to State Del. David Albo (R-Fairfax Station), recently refused him sex due to his support for the state's transvaginal ultrasound bill. The lawmaker complained about his wife’s action on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates.

On the Facebook page for Liberal Ladies Who Lunch, the group lists several similar strikes in recent years including ones in Colombia in 2006, Italy in 2007, Kenya in 2009 and Belgium in 2011.